Coming Monday to Hero Histories...

Riddle Me This, Caped Crusader Aficionados...

...how many of the legendary 1960s TV series' episodes were based on actual comic book stories?
The answer is...more than you think!

There's even a book reprinting a number of those graphic tales...but not all of them!

But, did you know a 1960s TV series tie-in novel with an original story (not a novelization of series episodes or the feature film) also adapted several comic stories into its' narrative?

We re-presented (starting HERE) this never-reprinted, original 1966 novel by "Winston Lyon" (actually noted Golden Age/Silver Age comics writer William Woolfolk) which combined elements of both the comic book and TV series versions of the Caped Crusader!

What we didn't realize at the time, was how much of the comic book version was actually taken directly from the comics!

Three different comics stories, each one featuring a different villain/villainess, were utilized to present multi-chapter crimes to baffle the Dynamic Duo!
We're presenting these tales in the order the foul fiends perpetuate their perfidy in the novel, along with links to the actual chapters for each one...

Monday!

Wednesday!

Friday!
The Four-Color Fun Starts Tomorrow at Hero Histories !
Same Bat-Time!
Same Bat Blog!
One hint...The campiest is yet to come !

It's a HOT Time at the RetroBlog Summer Blogathons!

A New Blogathon Begins Tomorrow...

...as Nazi-Punching gets a week-long workout with Doc Savage taking on his Nazi counterpart raised by scientists using the same techniques Dr Clark Savage Sr used for Clark Jr...at the 1936 Olympics in a never-reprinted, extra-long, almost half-century-old tale!

Guest-Starring: a host of historical figures including Jesse Owens and Adolf (you know who)!

Tomorrow at Hero Histories!

Meanwhile...

Jet Dream & Her Stunt-Girl Counterspies continue daily on both Heroines! and Crime & Punishment (With a Stopover at True Love Comics Tales)!

If You've Missed Their Already-Posted, Never-Reprinted, Silver-Age Adventures, Click HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE!

And Now...

We've Completed the Massive Re-Presentation of the Time-Lost, Never-Reprinted, First Prose Novel Starring the #FantasticFour , Doomsday, written by Marv Wolfman!

And for Those Silly Enough to Have Missed Any of It...

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 & 16 17 & 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 & 27

RetroBlogs: We're Working Hard While You're on Vacation!

Friday Fun KOOKIE "Playmate"

John Stanley & Bill Williams' Short-Lived Strip About 1960s Urban Eccentrics...

...featured not only the 18 to 25 "young adult" crowd, but older, equally-eccentric characters!




John Stanley (script/layouts) and Bill Williams (pencils/inks) did three humor series for Dell in the early 1960s, Kookie, Around the Block with Dunc & Loo (later shortened to just Dunc and Loo) and Thirteen Going on Eighteen.

While the first 9 issues of the last (29-issue) series have been reprinted in a superb collection (see below), neither Kookie (2 issues) nor AtBwD&L/DaL (8 issues) has ever been reprinted...which is a great loss to pop culture as far as I'm concerned!
Note: Though Stanley did the layouts on the stories, the painted covers to Kookie were entirely Bill Williams' work!

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Thirteen Going on Eighteen

by John Stanley (& Bill Williams)
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Friday Fun COOL CAT "See You in the Funnies"

We Love it When Comics Go  (Sorta) "Meta"...

...in this case, characters being spied upon by a comics creative with his own ulterior motive!

This never-reprinted tale from Prize's Cool Cat V9N1 (1962), written and illustrated by Jack O'Brien may confuse many readers younger than Baby Boomers (1946-1966) who don't realize the extensive variety of subcultures that existed during the 1960s.
Cool Cat's parents are beatniks.
Cool Cat himself is a hipster/slacker.
The cartoonist, though a creative, is a square, supposedly not as "artistic" as a beatnik or hipster.
Note: there are no hippies at this point.
They didn't come along for another several years.
Trivia: Though this is V9N1, it's the second of only three Cool Cat issues, none of which have ever been reprinted in any form!
The numbering was continued from Black Magic, created by Jack Kirby & Joe Simon in 1950.
Writer/artist Jack O'Brien began his comics career in 1943, doing work for everyone from Charlton to Parents Magazine Press to Dell to Harvey to Timely (Marvel's predecessor).
His first work for Prize was in 1952, and he continued freelancing for them until 1965, switching over to their b/w MAD magazine clone SICK when the four-color comic line was cancelled in 1963.
His new last work appeared in 1976.

Atomic Reading Room TALES TO ASTONISH "Voice of Fate"

Our final tale about Hiroshima is a re-working of the previous one...

...but with some interesting variations!

This story by plotter Stan Lee, writer Larry Lieber, and artist Don Heck is from Atlas' Tales to Astonish #33 (1962) and is a retelling of "Mister Black", which appeared only a couple of months earlier in Atlas' Strange Tales #93 (1962).
You'll note the protaganist is now American...but still a draft dodger.
Of course, the story omits why the Japanese would even take him in (since he had nothing of value to the government), or how he even got to Japan in the middle of World War II...

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Science Fiction Comics

Taylor History of Comics

Vol 3

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Space Heroine Saturdays BARBARELLA 4.1

It's been a couple of months since we checked up on Barbarella...

...so let's begin the final chapter of her 1960s adventures!

Next Month:

The Fantastic Finale!

Plus some fun facts!

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Barbarella

2-Disc 4K Blu Ray

with Lots of Kool Extras

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Friday Fun P.S. The Batman Meets the ORIGINAL Bat-Man...or Is It ORIGINAL Man-Bat?

"But...We're Practically Brothers!"

A never-reprinted cartoon from Mercury Press' P.S. #2 (1966)

This immediately-followed the nostalgia article "Guys in the Trick Suits" about Golden Age comic books from the same magazine that we ran last Friday!

Friday Fun P.S. "Guys in the Trick Suits"

During the Era of Batmania (In the 1960s)...

...mass market magazines oriented towards the over-30 crowd (who apparently had forgotten their childhoods only a decade or two earlier), sought an explanation as to the appeal of comic books to the under-30 crowd.

P.S., a short-lived magazine (only three issues) dedicated to nostalgia, brought in William F Nolan, a noted science fiction writer with numerous teleplays and short stories to his credit.

You've read his piece, written and published just after the Batman TV series debuted in January, 1966.

What do you think of his look back at his childhood during the Golden Age?
Note: A year after this, Nolan, in collaboration with George Clayton Johnson, wrote the novel Logan's Run.

Monday Mecha Madness NEUTRO "Captured by 777"

When Last We Saw Neutro...

Two American scientists had reassembled the parts of a giant automoton left in the Southwest over a century earlier by aliens for reasons unknown...for now!

However, unfriendly governments know of the robot, and seek to possess it!

We'll Never Know What Happens Next!

Written by editor D J Arneson and illustrated by Jack Sparling, Dell's Neutro #1 (1967) was meant to be an ongoing series, but never made it past the first issue.
Whether any work at all was done on a second issue is unknown!

Next Week:

Three Times the Mecha Mayhem as Combatra and Dangard Ace Join Raydeen as We Revisit the Shogun Warriors!

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Science Fiction Comics

Taylor History of Comics

Vol 3

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